From the Yellow Kid to Zippy, The Comics Salutes Historic Strips

The Yellow Kid launched the American art form known as the comic strip.

That goofy guy in the nightgown may look like a twerp, but the Yellow Kid — America’s Bart Simpson equivalent during the 1890s — single-handedly launched the comic strip industry.

Hogan’s Alley character the Yellow Kid makes his appearance early in upcoming book The Comics: The Complete Collection. Written by Museum of Cartoon Art founder Brian Walker, the 672-page compendium with more than 1,300 images offers an illustrated history of comic strip characters.

Besides mainstream favorites like Popeye, Dick Tracy and Snoopy, the encyclopedia includes the godfather of all masked crime fighters — Will Eisner’s The Spirit — and salutes late 20th-century subversives like Bill Griffith’s idiot savant, Zippy the Pinhead.

Walker acknowledges that newspaper comic strips might be seen as a dying breed, but writes “cartoons can be drawn on anything from cave walls to digital tablets. The future of the art form is not limited by the fate of the print medium.”